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Home » The Crystal Hall » Administrative Notes » Account registrations (what is beginning to tick me off)
Account registrations [message #55385] Thu, 15 March 2012 01:11 Go to next message
Warren is currently offline Warren
Messages: 1556
Registered: January 2005
Location: Wet wonderful Washington
When someone request an account on the forum I go through a pretty intense data search cross referencing, the originating IP address, the email and the location of the poster, along with my (in my opinion) highly tuned BS meter.

Of late I've been getting 3 to 5 request for registration a day. With phoney addresses or usernames or being untraceable. If any of that doesn't jive, I kill the request. End of discussion. I'm trying my hardest to keep spammers from hitting up the forum. And from current request I've seen, we are on at least a couple of bot submitters or someone using a set of responses.

I'm very sure there's no City of Santa Cruz in Belarus of Eastern Europe.

Sometimes writing with geeks is like eating Jello with a chainsaw. Interesting but painful.
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Re: Account registrations [message #55386 is a reply to message #55385 ] Thu, 15 March 2012 01:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
khade is currently online khade
Messages: 1589
Registered: May 2011
Location: Rockies
Is it possible to automate any of that? Seems like it's a lot of work that we do appreciate, but probably taking far too much time for you right now.
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Re: Account registrations [message #55387 is a reply to message #55385 ] Thu, 15 March 2012 01:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Warren is currently offline Warren
Messages: 1556
Registered: January 2005
Location: Wet wonderful Washington
I am very good at it and I have it down to a set of steps and spammer's are counting on automation they can spoof or confuse. I've had login names that range from complete nonsense to a bunch of Exclamation marks. At most it takes an hour or so in my evenings to swing by and check.

Sometimes writing with geeks is like eating Jello with a chainsaw. Interesting but painful.
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Re: Account registrations [message #57247 is a reply to message #55385 ] Tue, 24 April 2012 17:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Warren is currently offline Warren
Messages: 1556
Registered: January 2005
Location: Wet wonderful Washington
Ok enough already. I am not going to approve an account that says "I'm from Hemet" when I check on the origin it's actually Riga Latvia! Come on I'm NOT THAT STUPID!

Sometimes writing with geeks is like eating Jello with a chainsaw. Interesting but painful.
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Re: Account registrations [message #57250 is a reply to message #55385 ] Tue, 24 April 2012 18:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
BekDCorvin is currently offline BekDCorvin
Messages: 933
Registered: August 2005
Location: State of Confusion
Warren, I'm about as tech and net savvy as a turnip, but my guess is that you're dealing with some sort of robot-program that has our addy and is simply working it as long as it's still a valid target. Maybe simply shutting down new account registrations for a week or two will convince it that this is no longer a valid target, and move on.

Of course, I could be wrong.

To Be, or Not to Be; this is a question?
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Re: Account registrations [message #57255 is a reply to message #55385 ] Tue, 24 April 2012 19:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Warren is currently offline Warren
Messages: 1556
Registered: January 2005
Location: Wet wonderful Washington
Ok, I'm willing to try it. Registration is now closed.

Sometimes writing with geeks is like eating Jello with a chainsaw. Interesting but painful.
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Re: Account registrations [message #57291 is a reply to message #55385 ] Wed, 25 April 2012 13:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mikisha is currently offline mikisha
Messages: 128
Registered: May 2011
Location: UK
You can use javascript to change the 'action' term of the form when it's submitted, which means the form in code can be coded to send to a dustbin unless the sender has javascript. A generic formbot would fail, I think.

Similarly, you could embed codes in the form's url and check for them in the http-referrer component when it's submitted.

These might at least help to detect humans.

My Webcomic, Verity's Ark
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Re: Account registrations [message #57294 is a reply to message #55385 ] Wed, 25 April 2012 14:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Laudator is currently offline Laudator
Messages: 938
Registered: February 2009
I have also heard of things like hidden tickboxes (so humans can't see them, but robots may select them) and tickboxes which say (tick/don't tick if you are human)

Unless there's a whole LOT of spam, any sort of coding is probably not worth the time though.

Newbies annoy you? Cut them some slack. Communities with no newbies tend to die.
Not 100% sure if that word/phrase is right? : Common Errors in English Usage
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Re: Account registrations [message #57419 is a reply to message #55385 ] Sat, 28 April 2012 20:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Bookworm is currently offline Bookworm
Messages: 1576
Registered: July 2008
Location: Houston
I've seen the hidden forms, and they do work. It's because the robots scrape the code for the page, rather than actually 'seeing' the page (other than captchas)

Captchas can help as well - just don't go for the ones that are so insane that even humans can't read them. Yahoo drives me NUTS, because it frequently demands a captcha even with the right password just to log into your email. - and I've futzed up the captcha three times running.
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Re: Account registrations [message #57549 is a reply to message #55385 ] Mon, 30 April 2012 12:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mittfh is currently offline mittfh
Messages: 764
Registered: May 2011
Location: Kenilworth, UK
A couple of interesting variants on the Captcha I've seen:

a) rather than distorting an image of text, display it using a Figlet font (BUAFs, much derided in email signatures).

b) a simple maths problem (let's face it, if your readers don't know the answer to 11+1 or 13-9...)

But as others have said, Captchas are generally a last resort - and if IP blocking or hidden tickboxes that encode to "Send to /dev/null" work, so much the better Smile
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Re: Account registrations [message #57567 is a reply to message #57549 ] Mon, 30 April 2012 17:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wyrm is currently offline wyrm
Messages: 98
Registered: May 2011
Location: London, UK
One Captcha variant that I like is an 'animated' code where a normal readable font is used, but the code word floats, fairly slowly, around the box.
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Re: Account registrations [message #57572 is a reply to message #55385 ] Mon, 30 April 2012 18:27 Go to previous message
Sir Lee is currently offline Sir Lee
Messages: 3068
Registered: May 2005
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
I have seen one that displays a bunch of words and asks you to type JUST the ones that follow some arbitrary (and ever-changing) rule:
- Only the ones NOT printed in BLUE
- Only the ones with the second letter being "D"
- Only the ones that are names of fruits

and so on...

Don't call me Shirley. You will surely make me surly.
--
Sent from my Bugs Industries® bPhone™
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